In Maple Creek, where two weeks ago people were walking around in t-shirts and the mercury climbed to plus 16.4 C, the low was -29.7 C.

Meanwhile, the frosty temperatures have resulted in furnaces working overtime, and there's been a record broken for natural gas consumption.

In the 24-hour period that ended 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, Saskatchewan used 1.13 petajoules of natural gas, according to SaskEnergy. That's equivalent to 2.5 million gas barbecue tanks.

SaskEnergy spokesman Dave Burdeniuk attributed the rise to both the cold and the fact that the natural gas utility has added thousands more customers since 2004 when the previous gas consumption record was set.

Given the forecast, Thursday could be another record-setting day, he said.